Facebook Facts and Your Business

Pew Internet recently completed a study of Facebook user behaviors that provides valuable insights that can help you more effectively use Facebook to grow your circle of influence – and business opportunities.

Facebook Friends are Not Real Friends

Men and women especially, and all of us in general, differ on who we consider to be our real friends. Of course, social networking complicates this further.

Most of us would agree that our real friends are a small percentage of our Facebook friends, and the Pew study validates this.

How does Facebook make this determination? From your social graphs – those digital maps that define your online presence based upon your profile information, all of your connections with people, and every bit of online content that you have touched in some way.

When there is perfect integration among all of your friends, you theoretically have 100% connectivity. In other words, in a perfect world everybody knows everyone else. It turns out the average Facebook user has about 12% connectivity among their Facebook friends.

From a practical business standpoint, achieving deeper integration with your Facebook friends is something that will more likely lead to future business opportunities.

Referrals and new opportunities happen as a result of relationships. This is all the more reason why you should be using Facebook smart lists to organize your Facebook friends, so you can build those relationships.

Facebook Power Users Tend to Specialize

It should not surprise anyone that 20% of the Facebook users contribute the majority of the content. What’s interesting is that these power users tend to specialize in certain activities, such as Liking the content of others, tagging others in photos, or sharing fresh content.

For those who want to use Facebook to build expand their circle of friends and influence without having to live on Facebook, the message is clear. Just pick a lane – do something well, and do it consistently.

The fact that the majority of Facebook activity is contributed by the minority of power users tell us that the majority of Facebook users are there as passive observers.

For this majority, Facebook is effectively a source of news or entertainment.

This is an opportunity for businesses that are making the effort to contribute. Share ideas, photos, videos, or whatever is of interest to you – and watch your circle of friends grow.

Even for businesses, the true value of Facebook is building relationships. Business opportunities are by-products of others first knowing more about you.

That’s what predisposes them to even noticing the information you share about your business.

How are you using Facebook? Leave a comment below.

Share this with your community and encourage them to join the conversation.

Until next time, Jeff

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This is my first read on social media.
I chooose to speak about it to a group of instructors wanting to know the pro’s and con’s of using it in a classroom of 16-18 year olds.
I chose the topic because I currently know nothing about it.
Looking forward to a huge learning curve.
Great start